Let me give you some advice. Now is not the time to talk about guns nor gun control since you're all emotional. Wait until some time has passed and you're thinking soundly to not talk about any of this. And once you get a few more under your belt you won't really notice them anymore at all. They'll just be the part of the news you have to sit through to get to the weather.

Death toll has nearly reached the Los Vegas proportions. Used an *gasp* AR-15. Licenced too. Government is talking about improving our gun laws. We've had several debates over the last few decades, but people think its time for change.

A terrible, terrible situation. I remember a couple years ago when the mosque in Quebec city got shot up, a bunch of my students at the time who were refugees from Syria were really messed up by it. They came here to get away from that kind of thing. It was hard to deal with that.

Gun laws are important, and should be talked about. But, (and here's a real controversial opinion) so should hate speech laws. Not to derail, and I'm not sure of the motivation of the individuals involved in this specific case, or of NZ's laws on what can and can't be said. Furthermore, in today's world, this is really an international issue. But still. People will believe just about anything. If they hear it repeated often enough, doubly so. And some of them will act on it.

I haven’t seen anything about the killer being a Christian. Did I miss something?

No, nothing at all.

I don't know that the shooters here professed to be Christians, specifically.

My post was an attempt to point out the hypocrisy inherent in those who immediately wish to scream "ISLAMIC TERRORISM!" whenever a middle eastern person commits some such atrocity, but decline to lable this kind of attack in a similar light. Nothing more.

From what I've seen reported about the manifesto he wrote it seems like the most relevant of the shooter's identities is white supremacist. So for example he directly references a neo-nazi slogan, uses white supremacist symbols, and so on.

I know that some white supremacist groups identify as Christian, I think mostly by way of emphasizing Christianity as a European identity. In the late 90s I knew someone who identified with a "Christian identity" group that emphasized both Christian identity and European identity in a racist way. So for example they believed that only white people were descended from Adam (and that non-whites were sub-human), that people of British descent were really the lost tribes of Israel, and that modern-day Jews were Satanic. It was nasty stuff. But on the other hand some white supremacists have adopted the use of older pagan religious symbols instead of Christianity.

I haven't seen any reporting about the religious affiliation of the killer but it seems reasonable to guess that his antipathy to Muslims might tie both ethnicity and religion together, e.g. as antipathy towards both non-Europeans and those of "non-European" religions, from his perspective. It wouldn't necessarily mean he was very traditionally Christian, and given his association with some of the nastier parts of the internet he might not have been particularly religious at all. From what I've seen of that particular group they tend not to be.

I don't know that the shooters here professed to be Christians, specifically.

My post was an attempt to point out the hypocrisy inherent in those who immediately wish to scream "ISLAMIC TERRORISM!" whenever a middle eastern person commits some such atrocity, but decline to lable this kind of attack in a similar light. Nothing more.

I don’t think that rash labeling is an effective antidote to rash labeling.

If a terrorist yells “Jesus Saves!” I’d be inclined to call it Radical Christian Terrorism. If he yells “Allahu Akhbar!” I’d be inclined to call it Radical Islamic Terrorism.

Again, fair enough, but I'm not sure that yelling "Jesus Saves!" makes someone a Christian, or means that they are representative of Christianity as a whole. It certainly doesn't mean they what they are doing is in keeping with Christian teaching. Similar things may be said of those who yell "Allahu Akhbar!".

In any event, I don't have any reason to think that this was actually an act of Christian terrorism.

Sad to see in this time people making horrid comments, including some politicians.

As per usual in the aftermath of these sorts of events there has been a rush on gun buying because of talk of tightening legislation. Ironically a week ago the police had a report to the Government expressing concern at the ease and rate in which automatic firearms were being sold. There looks to be cross party support for tightening regulations so I'd expect changes. The gun lobby here is doing what gun lobbyists do.

Hmmm. Interesting article. Similar to what @wellnamed was saying about the historical relationship between Christianity and a European identity.

I think it's fairly clear that culturally, this person was a member of the "Christian" west. Whether he was actually a professing Christian or not is a separate issue.

I think there's a difference between being culturally Christian and actually being Christian. Though, they are not mutually exclusive.

Christians don't like to admit that. Though, they play into that themselves when they claim that people who commit horrible acts are "not true Christians".

I'm culturally Christian. I grew up in a country that has its basis in Christian culture and it still has an influence on my thought process and moral standards.

Yes, America was founded as secular, but the basis of its culture was settlements founded by religious Christian immigrants. The system of laws was based on the systems from Christian Europe where the church had a much more active hand in government and lawmaking at the time. We celebrate Christian holidays as national events and the vast majority of our citizenship is some form of Christian. Even those who identify as non-religious but not Atheistic usually lean more towards Christian spiritual beliefs than say Buddhist or Hindu beliefs in general. America is technically secular, but culturally Christian.

A lot of these far right groups are the same way. They aren't technically Christian groups, but are the result of cultural Christianity. The Republican party and the idea of "Republican Jesus" is another example of something that is the result of cultural Christianity more than actual Christianity. Jesus was a straight up socialist leftist extremist, but the culture of Christianity in America is the foundation of the right.

I think the distinction between "culturally Christian" and "religiously Christian" is basically right, and was what I was trying to get at as far as how white supremacists might employ an idea of Christian identity. At the same time, to disillusioned's point about how we interpret different situations I think it's also true that people become involved in Islamist movements for reasons that transcend actual religious commitments, although I think the leadership of those movements do tend to be more religiously motivated than white supremacist movements, especially ISIS. But the recruits may have all kinds of more materialistic/social motivations.

^ possibly very academic (I say this a lot :P), but somewhat useful if you're trying to parse people's motivations for horrific acts like this one.

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I wouldn't call streaming it necessarily bad. And definitely not the sharing of it. Now that the stuff is out there, it should be used. There were lessons to be learnt in the video. Like one glaring failure to escape and how that guy should have tried to tackle the shooter instead of thinking he could just run and get away.